In the past, attempts to find people have been based on search parties and paper flyers. Search parties scoured an area looking for a lost or wanted person. Since the lost person could well be mobile, searchers are often required to dedicate resources to supporting stationary observers and redundant searches in case the lost person wandered back into a previously searched area. Flyers alerted the public to watch for the person. This approach required a searcher or a member of the public to actually observe the person in order for the search to succeed.
Modern technology has added remote sensing to the effort. Video cameras often monitor public places and produce video recordings or video signals. The recordings and signals can be routed to a central location having people or specialized equipment that can scour the recordings or signals for the sought person. For example, a video recording from the camera in an automated teller machine can be watched to see if a sought person appears. Specialized equipment can produce a face descriptor from an image or artists rendition of a person. Other equipment in the central location can then automatically scan video recordings and signals for that person. In this manner, a person's past presence at a location can be determined.
Further advances in technical capability, however, can lead to advances in automated systems and methods for seeking people, not in person, or after the fact, but remotely, and in real time. As such systems and methods that exploit more recent innovations are needed.